In the construction of residential houses and other buildings having peaked or slanted roofs, the roof, particularly in the Sunbelt regions of the United States, usually consists of three successive layers of materials. First, 4'.times.8' panels of 5/8" plywood are nailed to the wooden roof trusses. Next, the plywood panels are covered with overlapping horizontal strips of 36" wide builder's felt roofing paper. Finally, the roofing paper is covered by shingles of various types depending on the style of the building.
On many construction sites several weeks may elapse between the time the roofing paper is laid on the roof and when the shingles are installed. Accordingly, the roofing paper must be securely fastened to the plywood panels to prevent damage by high winds and rain not only to the roofing paper and plywood panels but to the interior of the building and its contents until the shingles are installed.
Most contractors presently engaged in roof construction use air-powered staple guns to staple roofing paper onto the underlying plywood panels, but a staple alone tends to cut through the roofing paper and thus does not provide permanent fastening of the paper to the plywood panel. Therefore, some form of reinforcement is required between the staple and the roofing paper.
The item most commonly used by roofing contractors to secure stapled paper to the plywood is a 11/2" diameter tin-plated steel disc 0.015" thick. An air-driven staple will pierce this disc and secure it to the paper and underlying panel.
However, these metal discs present a number of disadvantages. To lessen rusting of the discs during storage, the discs are normally packaged in a bath of oil which makes the discs messy to work with and time-consuming and difficult to separate. If two or three unseparated discs are inadvertently placed on the felt paper and an attempt is made to staple them, the staple often will fail to penetrate the stacked discs, causing the staple gun to jam and/or possibly injure the workman.
Despite their tin-plating and oil coating, the discs often rust before they are used. The discs have a circumference which often is sharp and jagged, a source of cuts on the hands and fingers of those working daily with these discs. Finally, the air-driven staple often drives the disc into the roofing paper with such force that the sharp edge of the disc is raised up from the roofing paper a fraction of an inch, which is sufficient to expose the edge as a potentially dangerous "stumbling block" for workmen on the roof and a source of cuts on the hands and fingers of those who install the shingles or other materials after the roofing paper is laid.
We have invented a simple but unique reinforcing roofing tab for use in securing stapled roofing paper onto an underlying surface and an improved "package" for storing and delivering these tabs to the site where they are to be used.
In their preferred form, our reinforcing roofing tabs are made of styrene 0.03" thick and 11/4".times.11/4" square. The tabs are manufactured, stored and delivered to the job site as a continuous roll of approximately 1100 tabs with the edges of adjacent tabs closely perforated in order to facilitate ready separation of a single tab from the roll.
The roll of perforated tabs preferably is wound upon an open hub so the roll of tabs can be hung on the belt of a workman to provide easy access to the perforated tabs as needed.
We have found that use of our perforated styrene tabs not only prevents the injuries and jammed staple guns often caused by use of the conventional metal discs, but considerable time is saved and the cost of fastening the roofing paper to the plywood panels is reduced.